Essays mainly about wineries, and winemaking and other topics of related interest...

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Blogging Blogojevich in Blogadoon

Everyone knows the story of Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that only appears once every hundred years. No one from the village may leave or it will disappear forever. OK, it's time admit it when the fairytale is over. We baby boomers grew up in Brigadoon, a place protected from change, a place ensconced in the mists of legend and lore and protected by the mysterious hand of fate. A place no one could never leave or it would cease to exist forever. We all knew the consequences so we chose to remain. That no longer seems to be the case. Someone has left and the next time we all disappear, it may be forever.

We must find out who it was, who was improvident enough to put his own personal good above that of his fellows, ferret out who was it that left? Was it possibly Rod Blogojevich when he departed from Illinois to appear out of the morning mists on Good Morning America and the Early Show? Was it bonny Blogojevich, the all-American tough kid from the north side of Chicago who made good and got an expensive haircut, did he ruin the spell and spell ruin for the rest of us? Did he cross some invisible boundary, thrust himself out into an unwary world at the expense of his colleagues and his state? Will the state of Illinois or possibly America disappear never to be seen again except in a Lerner and Lowe musical revival? The process of disappearing seems already to have begun. If you look on the Illinois State website for his bio, there is no Governor Rod Blagojevich, his bio is gone, missing, disappeared, nada. It is only the first sign of many? Are we all destined to now disappear, be replaced by a '404 file not found' error in the webpages of memory. Perhaps only Oprah can save us from this fate!!

For some reason I felt sympathy for Blagojevich. There was Harry Smith on CBS looking like ole' Rod was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, something he stepped in and was glad to find himself wearing brown shoes. Yet, here I was feeling sorry for the weaselly guy who it seemed everyone knew was finished except for him. Why was that I wondered? Then I realized, --that's exactly my job. A winemaker's job is to hold on to something with very public desperation, something everyone else knows is likely to disappear, then to bottle it and sell it. Here was Rod, selling the public desperation. Tryin' to hold on to it against what all of us saw as reason.

What keeps us going? What kept Rod going?Well, for one, sometimes we do pull it off. Sometimes we do capture that ineffable combination of aroma and taste and there suddenly it is again, the essence of that grape, swinging away like a prizefighter at the Golden Gloves. We stop asking; How do you capture something that is evancescent? How do you recognize it when it is present? When it disappears how do you know when it is likely to appear again? How do you prevent it from disappearing forever? Can you bottle it?.....And if we do bottle it. So? what happens then? Well, let me introduce you to Oprah Winfrey the junior senator from the great state of Illinois and Brigadoon.

About Me

Ken's articles on the revolutionary era in Hudson Valley have appeared in the OCHS Journal, Minerals Magazine and PTG Journal. His work in fiction and non-fiction focuses on the history of scientific agencies in the U.S. He continues to lecture on topics of historical interest throughout New York State.
After returning home from sea he moved to the Hudson Valley to build on on a piece of land owned by his grandfather. After planting a vineyard in he decided to try offering a few hand crafted wines to the general public. It took another seven years to get government approval but finally, in 2006 he proceeded with the tasting room project. The result was Silver Stream Winery.
His musical career has spanned forty years. After a ten year professional career in including appearances with Huey Lewis, Steve Odum, Fabian, The Platters, Robert Merrill and appearances at Lincoln Center and the Kool Jazz Festival, he currently plays bass with the New Sussex Symphony Orchestra and others.
He is working on the third in the monoville series "moon over mono." "Makers of the Telegraph" will be his first non-self-published full length non-fiction work.